SPAIN’S autumn 2023(September 1 to November 30) was the second-hottest in the modern era- beaten only by last year’s fall season.
The State Meteorological Agency(Aemet) said that the autumn just gone was extremely warm, with an average temperature in mainland Spain of 16.3°- 1.9° above normal and just a tenth lower than autumn 2022.
In one out of every three weather stations of the main Aemet network, the average temperature in the autumn was ‘the highest in the current series of measurements’.
It however it did become the fifth rainiest autumn of the 21st century, the 17th since records began but the average does not indicate that some parts of the country recorded very low precipitation.
Spain has now had two successive extremely warm autumns and seven of the ten warmest autumns ever were recorded in the 21st century with the last ‘cold’ autumn recorded in 2010.
Aemet spokesman, Ruben del Campo, said: “The summer and autumn of 2022 and spring of 2023 were the warmest in the series, in addition to last summer, which was the third warmest, and this fall, the second.”
“Of the last seasons, apart from the winter that was a little less warm, all of them have been on the league table of high temperatures,” he added.
Following the pattern marked by climate change, ‘cold episodes were few and far between’ both last season and the rest of the year.
There was no cold wave and only one episode of low temperatures ‘with substance’ in 2023- between the end of February and the beginning of March.
Although the remainder of December still needs to be considered including last week’s high temperatures, Aemet says that 2023 will be second in its ranking of warmest-ever years, following 2022.
The average annual temperature will be around 15.3°, one tenth lower than last year, which is 1.3° above normal, compared to an anomaly of 1.6° last year.
In terms of rainfall, last autumn was a wet season with an average of 243.6 litres per m2 falling- 21% above normal.
The problem was that the rain fell very unevenly on the Spanish mainly.
Therefore, there were extremely wet months in a large part of Galicia, parts of Castilla y Leon, the Community of Madrid, Navarre, and the north of Castilla-La Mancha.
On the other hand, it was dry in the Valencian Community, Murcia, and Andalucia.
As for the current season, all indications are that winter will be warmer than normal in around half of the mainland, while about a fifth may be get lower than average temperatures.
In Andalucia as well as the Balearics and the Canaries, the warmth probability goes up to 60%, while the chances of those area being colder than average drops to just 10%.
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